In the Shadow of Hyas
by Shadowfire2013
Summary: The man comes bearing thing beyond food of which the boy does not yet understand.  OCs, PreKotor, Drama.
1. Chapter 1

Author's Note- Character colloquial language and the lack of -"- for quotes and dialogue is intentional.

Timeframe: Pre-Kotor, Pre-Atlas Astray

Characters: OCs (Fawkes, the man, the blind beggar)

Summary: The man comes bearing thing beyond food of which the boy does not yet understand.

* * *

The boy came from the alleyway dragging his gangrened leg behind him. Between the trash-filled banisters of which he had searched the previous night and found only rotted cores of discarded fruit which were besmirched with maggots. He looked at the fortified walls, there in the distance. They were pockmarked and windswept of their edges and the sun rose behind them and their shadows fell on the main avenue, resembling fallen birds of prey whose beaks and claws looked for lost souls to rend. 

His nails scratched against the shattered tiles of the street and they gave a forewarning to the beggars lined against the building walls. All of them a collected mix of what the world forsook. The blind and maimed and the scabbed youths and the old men who squinted at the sky with their lined eyes and the aliens whose strange skin contrasted sickly with the landscape.

He looked upon them and those that could judge him did so and found him unworthy of their time. He went and sat by a blind man, away from the youths. His eyes were blue and saddled over with a thin pale gauze, as if pneumonia had struck only those instruments of his will. The boy glanced at the empty bowl. Empty. He cursed.

Sorry. There ain't nothing for you today.

I didn't steal a thing.

You was thinking of it though. Don't deny it. I can hear it in your breathing. Every person in this world can be found out in their mischief and foul thoughts. And you'd be a thrice made fool if you thought a little ole blindness meant anything in those regards.

The boy sat down and waited. In the dull roar of the morning as the city shook itself awake to go forward and forage once more and satiate the omnipresent hunger. From which descended all the sins that could be counted and named.

The streets grew loud with the clatter of the vendors and their carts and the vagabond travelers whose destinations were unknown to themselves and the droids beeped and whooped in their displays of electronic affection and the disparate voices rose up in eclectic symphonies and the chatter of their movements echoed like drums into the daylight. A million different thoughts and actions conglomerated into a senseless whole that went abroad and below like a beast rooting in the dark earth.

The boy watched and when these strangers passed he called out to them, as did the others, save for the blind man who sat there in his hunched state pressing his fingers into the bowl; tracing its clay contours.

The strangers were a varied lot. In temperament and class and there were those who avoided the poor contingent and stared into some far off distance and then there were some who would look towards them all and turn away and scurry off at a quickened pace and then there were the occasional few who came forth and in a random process of contemplation would go forth and hand out a simple conveyance upon which the beggars' lives were measured.

But they were few and the boy had never met such people and his stomach gurgled and he could not swallow.

A man came down the avenue with a cigarillo tucked between his lips, hands in his coat pockets, and the smoke filtering into his face. He had the look of some pale mortician about his business.

The boy watched him. Drawn to him like some entranced snake.

The man's face was a cold dead stone but also malleable. A shifting mask. The boy looked at the clay bowl to his right then back at the man. The same nature and property found in both.

The man dropped the cigarillo and crushed it against his square toed soles and went to a cart and greeted the vendor like a brother and placed his hand on the vendor's shoulder. They conversed, the merchant in good cheer who laughed and guffawed and made motions to the sky with his broad hands. They talked for a while. Each gesturing in turn.  
The crowd gave them a berth and they made use of it.

The shadows grew short and the boy sat upon his own shade. As did the other poor.

The vendor reached into a compartment and procured a large pastry and it glistened like gold. The mortician attempted to leave empty handed but the vendor would have no part of it and he thrust into the food into the other's hands. The man bowed his head and moved on and bit into his prize.

The man came nearer. His face shifted into neutrality and he stepped near the boy.

What'd you do to him? You some kind of Jedi? The boy said.

He stopped and turned and looked the boy over. The boy's emaciated muscles clung to his bones and his skin was bathed in a thin layer of mustard grime and his hair was like a thornbush and he smelled like trash and his eyes bulged forth like ash emeralds. He bit into the pastry and chewed it into a thin mush and chewed it more. He watched the boy's face. The verisimilitudes of the boy's bodily reactions.

The boy's face tightened. As if in an unmanifested anger.

The man swallowed. No, I am not.

Then how'd you get Marcus to spot you some food. I ain't ever seen you round here.

I'm an old friend of his.

No you ain't. Your accent's too rough. And friends of Marcus don't have money to spend on pointless kriff. Like that coat of yours. So how'd you do it?

The man looked the boy over again. Past the grime, and the gangrened limbs and the foul expression. Into the boy's bones and muscles, as if there was nothing from which could be hidden and that every manifestation of thought and desire had left some etching within the boy. He took another bite and savored the taste.

If you aren't going to tell me, you can get out of here. The boy looked at the pastry and his stomach let out a groan and his eyes glazed over a bit.

The man let a thin smile crawl along his face. You want this? He waved the food about. It left a fog in the air.

The boy waited, stuck on his paunches. You some kind of idiot? His hands trembled on the tiled street.

He waved it again. Drool fell down the boy's face. Unnoticed.

He put it inches away from the boy's hands, and when they came to grasp it he snatched it away. He put what was left into his mouth and masticated and swallowed it.

The boy spat on him and it ran down the side of his cheek and he took a handkerchief from his pocket and swiped it off and put the cloth back into the pocket.

I like you boy. See you round.

The man went down the avenue in between the unwitting people and blended into the masses and the boy watched him till he was only a faint blur in the distance.

If that man comes back round here, you get out of here and find yourself some hole to crawl into.

I'm gonna sit right here. That man ain't coming back.

And when he does? The blind man tilted his head in the direction from where the sound had reached out. You'll be at his mercy. His whim. Whatever that may be. You trust his intentions enough to sit there. I wouldn't.

I ain't you.

No. No you're not. But you got ears and you're still alive and that counts for something. Not much but some. Listen here.

What if I don't wanna? The boy scratched at the fleas and dug his fingernails into the roughed skin.

Then you get your ass somewhere else. In that dank hole preferably. That man you spoke with isn't a fool. Some passing tourist who you can finagle.

I know that.

Do you? Your attitude is a sad sight then. To think someone would knowingly deal with such a man. Crazy. You have no conception of what he is. Something beyond your ken. You think that you know what the world has. That you've measured it in your six-

Seven.

-Seven years of life. You've known nothing. Seen nothing.

I've seen more than you.

Have you? Just cause a man is blind today doesn't mean nothing bout yesterday.

The beggar flicked his hand into the bowl and came away empty and he stared out into the crowds which he could not see. He sniffed the air. The carried breeze was littered with the smells of the marketplace and he drew the ripped sleeve against the drool that leaked from his lips.

Look out at the people there. The blind man's finger quaked at their direction. Do you see them? Yes, you do. You see what they wear. How they move. The way they react to the world and the other people in it. But you do not see as that man can. Pull them apart. Each person consists of his individualities. Of the things that come together. Your hand is one such thing. Same goes for your face. Your thoughts. Things you once saw and did. All of them pieces. That man can see them; mold them to his own ends.

You're crazy, the boy said. He saw his hands, his legs, the tattered rags. Crazy.

You can't deny what he is. To do such a thing. He shook his head. Get outta here while you can.

I ain't your son so stop with the lectures.

The advice is free. Same thing I'd tell anyone with your misfortune.

Then tell it to them. Maybe they'd even pay you for it. And shut up.

And so the man did.

When the evening came, the boy went to his feet and limped back into the alleyway and found a cesspool of water and he cupped his hands in it and drank it and tasted the moss and the trace of oil. He gagged on it but did not spit it out. In a growing nausea he returned to the selfsame banisters and threw the foul fruit into the street and searched for some food to eat.

He found nothing.

He took one of the fruits in his hand and limped to a hidden crevasse. It wriggled in his grasp.

He looked at it for a long time, well into the night.

* * *

Things don't just happen. Every tumblin rock got's a mover behind it. So you know, the blind man said.

Like I didn't. I ain't a babe.

Didn't say you were. But people don't think through these things. Events that aren't so good happen to em and they look all around and say that there's no order to it. Crazy to think so. Ain't a one that says the good stuff in their life has no meaning to it. They claim that for themselves. On account of their will. Saying that they the mover.

And what'd ya say?

Well, I reckon that there's some mover out there. Working like he always has. Somewhere he won't be bothered. Behind the veil I guess. And he knows. Of what we do out there in the world. Our insides an-

Sounds like that man you telling me bout.

They not the same cloth. The mover watches. He don't worry about such things like molding and taking. It isn't something he concerns with. He's about the truth. A principle such a man is not too fond of except what he declares.

You think too much.

Got to. Ignorance has been going round here like a plague. A cue I think from that mover about his business.

The boy watched the blind man's face. There was a half smile on it, hidden beneath his beard. An ole lady came up and deposited a half eaten sandwich in the bowl and the blind man thanked her and she scurried away and he bit into the food like it was ambrosia and savored every morsel and when he was done he licked the bowl clean.

See. I told you.

You say a lot of things. Don't make them better than any other words.

The blind man sat there and rested his hands on his knees. Boy, he said.

What.

You gonna listen this time?

No. Never said I was ever going to.

The man'll come back.

No he ain't. Bother some other fool.

* * *

The man returned five days hence and he stopped by the boy who looked up at him, filthier then before. He held a credit chip in his hand. The sunlight refracted off of it and found a home in the lined eyes of the beggars; all intent upon the matter of the boy and the man, save for the blind. A bright sight. Like precious silver of which they had only conceived of in dreams and in hallucinatory graspings. 

You want this, the man said.

Kriff you.

He smiled. That is good. He twirled it between his fingers and walked past the line haggard against the wall in their emetic despair. His boots sounded like tolling bells. Each step a note lower in the clef, till each click of heel and sole was a chime with a bass ringing that shook into the very timbers of their throats, so that there was no room to ply him with pleadings.

He gestured at them with the hand holding the cigarillo. Do you all want this?

He thrust his other into the air and the trail of smoke trailed behind and the beggars nodded and made sounds in their mouths and reached out their hands. He moved from their grasp and came to the boy and with a dramatic flair; he placed it at the boy's feet.

He squatted down and looked at the boy. Face to face. He blew the vapor at the boy and he sucked it in and coughed and rubbed his eyes. Here you go, he said. What you desired. His eyes were like black pearls and what light was put into them was not reflected.

He spun on his heels and strode away and the boy took the credit into his hand and held it to his chest and looked to the hungry faces which rose from their stations like stricken cadavers who rebelled at their burial. Their voices cried out. That the money would be of no use of him but that the value was untold and could mitigate their suffering.

It's mine. Kriff off.

They advanced.

Run, the blind man said.

And the boy was stricken and his leg did not obey him and a frail rodian child came for him and grabbed the credit and the boy pushed the other's face away and yelled out at them that he would kill the person who tried such a thing. They did not listen and pressed themselves upon him and stepped upon the blind beggar's clay bowl and it shattered and they strode across the shards and felled the boy. One of the fellow children kicked him in the mouth and blood spewed out onto their leggings and another bit deep into his arm. And amongst themselves they fought. Once fraught limbs granted a renewal. A rebirth. Blows flew and kicks were spent and the boy could not see the sky and heard the dim crack of his ribs and the fractures in his leg and the credit was cool underneath his touch like a salve. Till his fingers were peeled from it.

One voice cried out in cheer and fled down the street with some few in pursuit. The others wandered off and tended to their wounds cursed the boy and the man and the blind beggar and all those which they knew.

The boy coughed ragged gouts of blood. The sky was a darkening blur. Tinged with streaks of orange and red. He convulsed and shook and cried at the anguish of his bones and in time grew silent.

The blind man reached out to the boy and took him and laid him in his lap. His hand trailed down the minted scars, the puckered eyes, the royal tinged bruises like ink blots, the broken lips, the outspoken nature of the boy's ribs and the dexterous skin like sandpaper. The man's hand shook and he sorrowed what he could for the boy though that capacity had fled him.

His other hand flitted over the shards of his bowl and it bled from their edges. Scarlet and thin into the cracks of the street. Underneath the footsteps of the passersbys.


	2. Chapter 2

The man returned the following day and the boy was not there. He brought a cigarillo out from a tarnished steel pouch and put it between his lips and lit a match to it and he stared at the tarnished splodges. He puffed twice and closed his eyes and walked away. Down the avenue.

The street bore only faint traces of life, in the dull grey morning. No vendors. No beggars. Only the faint chirpings of the birds. The silent melody of the clouds. Which looked to bear a dark weight. The ramparts held an ethereal air about them; from their pockmarks and smoothed ledges and the other symptoms of their senility. Like statesmen.

He thought it would rain by the evening as the air bore the cloud's condition and pulled out his data pad and inserted a reminder for later. He put it back.

The shops were all empty and vacant and the pans of glass were still misted and the contents of their interiors seemed like transparent hallucinations and when he paused to look he could not make out their forms and continued on his way.

He ventured off onto a side street and ducked underneath the bright colored tarpings and paused at a doorway and threw his cigarillo behind him and crafted a smiling veneer and pushed against the door and it opened before him and a bell rung. The tables were old and wooden and covered with white linens that peeled off just before they met the floor and he looked at the waitress and let his travel down her backside. He cleared his throat and she turned and smiled at him and smoothed her hair down and told him to go take a seat near the window, which he did.

The chair creaked under him and the fabric listed under his touch and he told the women he'd take the special.

"Anything to drink?"

"Something warm."

She went to the back and gave the order and pulled a chair and sat next to him and talked. He nodded in turn and made remarks to which she smiled at and when she paused he looked into her and the manner in which she arranged her body he saw that she was another common soul and possessed no inclination that each arranged syllable was calculated and tabulated. She fetched his meal and put it next to him and he sipped the drink. It was very sweet and he made a face though it was not necessary and she giggled. As expected.

"So you never told me your occupation," She said.

"Is that so." He took a sip and set it down. "I'm an investment manager."

"Sounds tough."

"Not as much as you'd imagine. It's all in the time and place and knowing when to risk it all."

"Like a hunter?"

"A passable simile. Though hardly brilliant."

They conversed more and he sifted through the food and took spare bite and when he finished with the drink she gave him her com number and said she'd be available on the weekend. He looked at and wrote down the number in the data pad. He looked at the crumbs and the fractional amounts of fish pushed around the plate and let them be. He bid goodbye and left out and felt her gaze linger on him as he passed the doorway.

He looked up and saw the sun beyond the walls and tucked his hands into his pockets.

He went back the way he came and avoided the awakened masses and arrived back at his origination and looked down at the old man. The beggar shifted against the wall and pressed his back into it.

"He ain't here."

"Where did you take him?"

"I took him nowhere."

"He's not your son. You don't owe anything to him."

"That so." The beggar rubbed his fingers together and thin peels of dirt mashed together and coalesced beneath him. "Gotta disagree with you there. Relation's got nothing to do with debt or its lack. Son or not. He is. I am. That's all."

The man tilted his head. "That so."

"Yeah."

"You're lying to yourself."

"Says the liar."

The man shrugged. "Only as much as any other."

"More than any I've known." The blind man shivered and drew his rags across himself as if they were some armor. From which his essence could remain undistinguished and invisible.

"I'll come by tomorrow to see if he's around."

"You do that and I'll whoop ya."

The man stared into the beggar and tore the minutiae of that man into their base components. His syllables. His mannerisms. The depth in his words.

"To think to that you've learned nothing," he said. "Making promises that you can't keep."

He half smiled when the beggar flinched and moved further away and put another cigarillo in between his lips and looked at the half fallen walls in the distance like felled hawks. Of which whom were defrocked and naked and awaiting purchase.

"What a good day."

It rained.

* * *

The boy lay under an archway and a lumilamp glowed above him in a half rusted socket and the water drizzled down and left thin rivulets and would be streams coursing down the paths taking the miniscule garbage with it . The light flickered on. Then off. On again.

His arm hung from his side and it tingled with a faint buzzing and he bit his lip and rammed his shoulder to the wall and he bounced against it. The air cracked and he cried out and collapsed into a heaving mess. He took a minute and stayed there and breathed. Ragged in form and function. His eyes kept shut. Against the world. Like it was a dream he could expunge by hopes and wishes alone.

He stretched out and coughed out blood and wiped the piddle from his mouth and looked at his other hand where the fingernails were torn and raw and where his pinky stood lock pinned at an angle. He swallowed and gripped and trembled.

He wrenched it out and bit deep and drew blood and the copper liquid fell onto his tongue and rolled on it and he swallowed it. So that his parched throat would have some sustenance.

He paused and rasped and waited and when he finished he peeled his wet clothes off and made a crumpled pile and winced at every misspoken movement. He was naked and the dirt on his skin did not peel from the water and he shivered and forwent the sight of his acquired scars and bruises and puckered scabs in the transitory light and laid his head against the stone and hugged himself and shivered as his tongue explored the gap in his teeth as the water fell down.

The light returned and his stomach rumbled.

"Shut up," he said.

It did not listen and the world became dark once again.

* * *

The man passed the lane of beggars in the morning and in the evening and the boy was not there and the blind man corrupted his spot and took in all donations of charity or passing negligence and paid no heed to the man though he requested conversations in all manners and in all forms.

* * *

The boy came to his station like a rheumatoid arthritic and the passing line of beggars watched him and he them but his glare did not dispose them. They stayed at their unassigned posts and he looked one in the eye they met it for a moment but nothing was conveyed or revealed. Their gaze was empty and chilling and bore the lack of good years and held no such understanding of this.

The blind man looked up and listened to the boy's shuffle and when the boy paused in front of him he shook his head.

"I knew you'd make it out alright."

"Only cause I ain't an idiot waiting around. Like you said I should."

The boy looked at the spot next to the man. At the area where his blood had flowed. He sat down on them and coughed at the tenderness of his flesh.

"You need to get outta here. Like I said. The man has imposed himself on you. And'll make you his slave. You want that? To be owned? Theirs no life to it. Nothing of value in that way."

"I'm no slave. Never was. Never will be."

"It's that simple," the blind man said.

"Simple as choosing and not worrying about a mover and what he knows and what anyone else cares to do."

"Boy. It ain't that simple. There are things out there. Things that move without our prudence. Things that move against us. For us occasionally. You can declare all you want but they will be. Whether you wish it or not. So you say you're free. That no man own you. Means nothing if it ain't true and if the man move you to his will in defiance of yours."

"Say something that makes sense."

The blind man sighed and pulled at his beard. "The world is beyond our declarations of what it does. You can say a fire's cold. Doesn't make it so. Can you say that the man has not possessed you? Yes. But you fashion yourself a liar. Saying something so blatant and false."

"It ain't false. I choose it."

"Boy. There are only two ways in which you can meet this world. We can declare it untrue names and delude ourselves. That the world bends to us and our wishes. When in reality the mover knows. The planets moved before our births. The stars too. The dirt underneath our feet been there before we were material. Thoughts or dreams. Saying that things bend to us. Or the other way."

"The world is. We are subject to this. We are in its grasp. Only acceptance of this can bring us to the necessary conclusion. And her-"

The boy looked down the avenue where the crowd mingled together in a growing clamor and the blind beggar put his nose to the breeze and took in the crowd's aroma and their muffled shoe steps and the splatter of the dying puddles. The boy looked at the rich men and the fawning women and the children in their grasp and the vendors who called out and the droids who clicked and whirred and said words in still monochrome and at the shops he never entered and every object and food which he never touched or tasted. Then he looked at himself and he took water from a nearby puddle and cupped it in his hand and cleaned the dirt off of it. Underneath the grime it was a pale tan and there was a freckle on the back of his index finger which he possessed no memory of. He wondered about that.

He looked up and started. The man was there. Pastry in hand. Smiling with his teeth half exposed. Glittering white.

"Hello," he said. "I told you I'd come by."

The boy gulped and the blind beggar cursed and tried to get up but the man pushed him back down.

"What do you want?" The boy said.

"What do you think?" He brought the pastry up but the boy sat stock still and peered at the man's face. It held something undecipherable and the man's lips were set and his eyes were steady and his jaw was tensed.

When the boy did not take it, he brought the bread close to his mouth and inhaled its humors and its warmth. "Tell me. Who cleaned that hand? Was it you? Or did the rain make it that way?"

"You already know."

"You need to answer," the man said.

"I did."

"And who set your bones?"

"I did."

"Have you been given food?"

"No."

"Shelter?"

"No."

The man paused and blinked and stepped back and the boy flicked the tip of his tongue into the gap in his teeth. The man squatted down and held out the food again. Farther from the boy.

"So if you are hungry, why do you do nothing? Sitting there"- he pointed at the street, at the beggar- "and waiting for some charity which you have never received. That man next to you. He has nothing. No family, no friends, no possessions and what life is left to him is sustained by strangers. And you want to emulate him? To stay still and be hungry and thirsty and cold?"

"I don't want that. Never said I did."

"Actions are the bigger speakers. Not words. And doing nothing is tantamount to declaring that the situation is within your acceptance."

"That's a lie. I'm hungry and thirsty and-"

"Then why, why do you do _nothing_?"

The boy looked at the outstretched food and licked his lips and his jaw pulsed with dim flare pain and every injury and atom of abuse that adorned his body wound its way through his nerves and conglomerated at the edge of his limbs, which quaked and trembled. Then at the man. And back.

He breathed in and seized himself and in a fit, let his hand across the chasm between their two figures and plunged his fingernails into the bread and tore a portion and brought it back into his mouth before the man could utter a word. He swallowed the bread as soon as it touched his tongue and the flavor of buttered warmth tinged with thin clouds came to him only after, as he sat there bloated and staring at the man.

The man smiled. "Understand the difference? Action is the proof we need. That we are not victims but always the deciders of our conditions. You can be hungry and thirsty, but it is only of your volition that this is true."

The beggar snapped to and put his hands in the air and made them into fists. "Boy, leave. You feel it. In ya bones. He ain't right. Speaking of those things like he knows them. Hurry out while chance is with ya. Like the wind."

The man gestured to the beggar. "Here is your example. The type of man who has lost everything he has coveted and worked and suffered for. And somewhere in those defeats he blamed not his own ability, but something that cannot be seen. Known. Tested. To preserve himself and to escape the blame. The self doubt. This is the one you imitated and who taught you. A broken worker and an escapist. Are you like that? Do you want that?"

The boy licked the roof of his mouth; at the sticky damp crumbs. "No."

The man ate the rest of the food in his hand and rose to his full height and brushed the crumbs off against his pants. "Then you know what to do." He turned on his heel and walked away. Jacket fluttering in the wind and the dark soled shoes shining like beacons. Or far away lighhouses without their horns and bugles.

The boy clenched his jaw and closed his eyes and listened to his gurgling stomach, the dull rasp of the blind man. The world. The aftertaste of bread on his tongue. The warmth of the sun. The chafing of his rags. Slight tremors in his hands. In his ribs. The dirt underneath his fingernails.

He breathed in and gathered himself up and rose. He looked at the sky. At its brightness. Then at the blind man. He stood there for a while. Taking in the wall and the poor who bore no pity for any save themselves. Empty eyes but frayed bodies. A future not to be found. Only anguished and dull histories.

He looked at the blind beggar once more. Then he turned and went down the man's beaten path and limped up the avenue.

And the blind beggar put his ears to the breeze and mourned to himself.

For the boy was gone.


End file.
